Monday, September 12, 2005

Lifestyles of the Pockmarked and Famous....

Last week was probably the strangest in my Life as a Writer thus far. I had two photo shoots in a row. And I'm not talkin' about in no plastic cup. I'm talkin' about make-up artists, wardrobe, elaborate set pieces, the whole nine yards. Wednesday I was dressed, for unfathomable reasons, as the girl in the pearl earring - it took the efforts of three wardrobe professionals to get my head properly wrapped. Then I rolled on my back on this mechanic's slide deal and stuck my head through a cut-out hole where the face of this elaborately created woman-o-fruit's face would be. The rest of that day I spent with my hand up a turkey's ass. The turkey was real, but it was surrounded by fake ice that was made out of some truly nasty jello stuff.

On Thursday I shot a series of photos about An Ordinary Woman Cooking, for an article I'm writing. In a studio kitchen. In Williamsburg. With a totally hip Williamsburg wardrobe and professional makeup. And all the food made by a food stylist. The same food stylist, as it turns out, who had built the woman of fruit the day before. I'd also met the make-up person before. When I got my picture taken with lobsters for Reader's Digest. (Reader's Digest??!!!!) Her name is Renee, she has pink hair, she's very nice.

But, just so you know I'm keeping it real: stressed out because of the photo shoot, and because of all these articles I'm totally behind in writing, and because of personal issues which are none of your business, thank you very much, I broke out in the most hideous cold sore I've had in a long, hideous history of cold sores. This one popped up at the corner of my mouth and spread very nearly to my chin. I look like a leper. As one of my several make-up artists sighed, "Thank God for Photoshop." I suppose she should know.

As you guys know, I have a history with this stuff. Given that history, I imagine that when the book starts I'm going to spontaneously lose a leg or something.....

15 Comments:

Good to hear from you, and sorry that God visited the cold sore on you. It's to prevent hubris, as you know.

I enjoyed your article about raw food in today's Times, and thank you for doing all the work so I don't have to. Nasty stuff, but I guess it passed the time.

And another thing: in last week's Times there was a full page ad about some gathering where you can meet your favorite writers in Bryant Park. All the heavyweights were listed there, but only some names were printed in boldface, including--right next to a boldfaced "Salman Rushdie," --a boldfaced "Julie Powell"! Nice going, kid, but do us all a favor on the day and don't stand too close to Rushdie, just in case.

I encountered the raw food movement tangentially when I was moving out on my own and trying to figure out how to feed myself in a way that wouldn't contribute to an early death. My experience was that the "raw foodists" had some interesting ideas, but the reasoning behind the whole thing was scientifically suspect.

Furthermore, the emphasis on imitating the appearance of existing foods, instead of inventing unique combinations of raw ingredients, was counterproductive and often in blatant disregard of the actual feedback from one's tastebuds. I particularly remember a demonstration in which I was served "pizza" consisting of sun-dried tomatoes and shredded spaghetti squash on top of a slice of dehydrated nut-grain paste; this concoction was about as close to pizza as a facsimile I might construct out of Play-Doh.

It had its own distinct taste - and it was not that bad - but it was not pizza, and it seemed that the attempt to make it superficially resemble pizza had somehow robbed it of the characteristic of a truly successful recipe in which the whole becomes more than simply the sum of its ingredients all mooshed together.

Hey Julie! So your book arrived in Nova Scotia today, and I'm already about 1/2 way thru. What a GREAT read! Many, many congratulations!

I mostly lurked thru the original blog, but hopefully you'll remember the artwork I created for the Cafepress site....

If you find yourself heading to Canada on a book tour, or more precisely Halifax, please do drop me an email and I'll head over. During the Julie/Julia blog we lived in Las Vegas, but have since schlepped up to the Annapolis Valley in NS, so we're a lot closer to NYC these days.

Julie, I know this is one year late (or thereabouts), but I just found out that you were back in the blogging business. Great to have you back! About your cold sore: try Zovirax - it kills the cold sore before it gets started. Once you feel that little tingle, dap it on and keep dapping according to the instructions. Works like a charm.

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